


How Do You Measure a Year in the Life?

by themunak



Category: Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XIII-2, Okami
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-20
Updated: 2013-05-20
Packaged: 2017-12-12 10:19:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/810459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themunak/pseuds/themunak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snapshots of a boy and his dog. Only he would have the strangest pet in the entire world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Do You Measure a Year in the Life?

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a friend who loved my [previous FFXIII/Okami fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/363715) and wanted more of Hope and Amaterasu. However, there is no connection between the two fics.
> 
> Take note that this happens after the FFXIII-2 retcon of XIII's ending. As such, spoilers for both games abound.

Hope gets a dog while the soldiers take him along to reunite with his father.

Or, to be more precise, the dog gets him.

It's a huge, scruffy yet unbelievably fluffy thing with pure white fur and an amazingly expressive face. Hope has never seen anything quite like it before.

There it is, staring up at Cocoon, head tiled to one side like examining the crystal covering the entire sphere. Hope thinks that it probably had come out here because of the chaos inside, and is very confused as to what's going on.

He almost entices the thing to follow him, but stops because he's not sure if he should bring it along-- it's the start of the rest of his life and he's not sure how to start living full-time in Gran Pulse, let alone take care of an animal. But it stands and starts following him anyway, wagging its tail like it knows he's going to take it in. And he cant help but let it come along, because he's too raw over the loss of three more important people in his life, Lightning, Vanille and Fang, and he could use the company right about now.

His father is reluctant to allow a pet into their lives and Hope understands, but he gives in anyway.

The first night, he clings to the giant dog in his sleep, face buried in soft white fur that smells of flowers. Sun-grown, rain-kissed flowers of Gran Pulse, not the fal'Cie-made ones that had suddenly become so bland to Hope's senses after returning to Cocoon.

Strange, considering there had been no flowers near Cocoon's crash site.

Or maybe he's just dreaming about the smell.

\----------

On the second day, Rygdea tells him that the dog is a girl. It doesn't make a difference in Hope's mind, but it does provide him and the rest of the Cavalry a lot of laughs when the dog takes offense to Rygdea lifting her leg to inspect her gender, and she pees all over his boots in revenge.

On the third month, the dog finally gets her name-- Bravera. Hope's very bad at names, and with everything going on, he has had no time to do such a thing. Bravera doesn't seem to mind the delay though. Instead she rewards him with her own brand of kisses.

Very, very slobbery ones.

On the fifth month, Bravera defends him and the rest of the Cavalry from some Sanctum stragglers all on her own.

Die-hards who simply cant accept that it's an entirely new world they're living in, and that the old ways of following a fal'Cie (that's already dead, mind, considering everything of Cocoon save for its people had shut down because of Orphan's death) are no longer acceptable. Who still believe that they cant live without a fal'Cie to guide them. Who still think Gran Pulse is a hellish landscape instead of a wilderness full of potential that has been growing uncultivated for five hundred years.

They sneak into the Cavalry's camp at night-- or attempt to. It just so happens that Hope's father has one of his scheduled meetings with Rygdea concerning the founding of both a new government and scientific expedition team, and that he always, always brings Hope along. And wherever Hope goes, so does his loyal white beast of a dog.

No one expected anyone to arrive with the intention to attack them. And no one expected it to be in the dead of night-- but then again, no one expects a night attack.

It's only thanks to Bravera's loud, angry barking and a few sentries that the camp actually manages to mobilize against their would-be attackers. Though it's too late, because they're _all running away_ , and Bravera is right there, looking for all the world a wild animal protecting its territory from pesky little upstarts who want to claim it for their own. There's a light in her eyes that scares Hope, because it's more beautiful yet more potent than the power of any fal'Cie.

He almost doesn't want to touch her.

But in a split second the angry, snarling monster is gone, and his dog is back, wagging her tail and sticking her nose into his pockets for treats. And he presses his cheek against her head in relief.

She's safe.

She's safe and everything's okay.

The next day he removes the scarf from his neck and ties it around hers.

\----------

Every year, no matter where he lives, no matter what he's currently doing, Hope always goes back to Cocoon's crystal pillar. He visits, sits down where his statue used to be (because he remembers every little detail, from falling through the hole in Cocoon's shell and landing on the grass of Gran Pulse only to immediately become crystal) and thinks. About his mother, Fang, Vanille, and _Lightning_.

Every year, on the anniversary of the day the Sanctum attempted the Purge.

Years down the line, it's become a personal pilgrimage for him. Without fail, he goes and remembers every beautiful moment spent with some of the most important people in his life.

Sometimes his father accompanies him with flowers and thoughts for his late wife, when he can rip himself away from the Academy. Sometimes it's the former members of the disbanded Cavalry, Rygdea included, to pay their respects to the women who had given themselves so others could live and their former commander who only wanted the human race to survive. But usually, they're not with him.

He's never alone though. One of the many constants in his life is Bravera. She's almost never left his side ever since their first meeting.

She's become his one true friend over the years, and though she doesn't speak, she really doesn't have to-- the expressions in her eyes are enough for him to know just what she's trying to tell him, every single time.

She's never complained once about having to travel all the way back to the site of the Fall (well, maybe once for the lack of travel food), and never made a sound once there. She always lets him lean back against her when he needs it. She drags him around by the sleeve to go see things, things he usually wouldn't care about unless they were about science or his studies. She makes him _care_.

However, some little part of him is aware that dogs don't have long life spans and he's torn between completely ignoring that in favor of bliss and worrying when she too is going to leave him.

\----------

Hope is barely eighteen and exploring something he's put off for years in favor of finishing his studies-- sex.

He kisses a girl at his college graduation party, but goes home with a boy. He kicks Bravera out of his room and feels guilty about it, but thinking about doing _things_ while she's in the room makes him feel disturbed.

Hope is horribly inexperienced and unbelievably awkward and he'll never stop thinking that he'd done badly, but his bedmate for the night assures him the next morning that he'd at least been enthusiastic about the entire thing, and enthusiastic is a good thing. Bravera doesn't bark at him when the young man leaves the house.

She does however vet every partner after that. It's awkward, having your dog stare at every person you bring home very intently, like a mother giving a potential boyfriend or girlfriend the shovel talk.

Over three months after his first time, Hope dates a girl who seems nice at first, but starts becoming clingy, jealous and manipulative as the weeks pass by. She begins to keep him from meeting and even calling his father and refuses to let him go to long expeditions for the Academy. Hope wants to break it off but he's utterly terrified.

His savior comes in the form of Bravera, who'd been shut outside every time his girlfriend came to visit-- which was all the time. After weeks, he imagines she's tired of this ridiculous arrangement, because Bravera storms in through the window one morning and chases the girl out like a cat before she even has time to put her clothes on properly.

Hope laughs and laughs till he cries and buries his face in her fur. The next day, she helps him drag every bit of his former lover outside to throw away. He decides it's time to stop experimenting and exploring and just focus on the Academy. Machines and ruins may hurt you, but only physically.

\----------

Bravera disappears when Hope is nineteen. At first he doesn't think it's unusual, because she has a mind of her own, and she tends to go off and do her own thing for several hours or even a few days before coming back.

On the fifth day, he starts getting worried. She'd never been gone this long. Three days was her limit.

On the seventh day, he contacts Rygdea and asks him to help find her.

On the tenth day, Rygdea tells him that he cant find her, that's she's most likely dead because of how dangerous the surrounding lands are, teeming with all sorts of monsters. Hope's beside himself with grief, because he cant even get a body to bury.

On the fourteenth day, Hope becomes Director of the Academy and he throws himself into his work, body and soul.

\----------

Hope is twenty-four and had just seen Serah and Noel off to their next trip through the Historia Crux before he decides to try his hand at physical intimacy again.

Weeks later, after a hard day's work, he brings a young man to his bed. Someone who doesn't work for the Academy or the soldiers they employ, because Hope dislikes fraternizing amongst coworkers-- it causes problems, favoritism and other issues he wants to avoid, especially since he's the Director.

It's supposed to be a one-night stand, nothing more. But it doesn't turn out that way. In the morning, he wakes up with the man's number on his bedside table. He debates calling or not before discarding the scrap of paper.

He doesn't want a fiasco like his last lover to happen again, especially when ( ~~Bravera isn't around to help him~~ ) he has more important things to do.

\----------

Hope is twenty-six and still very raw from his father's death when the mysterious merchant Chocolina hands him a paintbrush, claiming it to be free of charge.

It's a curious thing, with one ink black hair and one blood red hair interrupting the monopoly of the pure white ones, and a handle made out of a pale-colored wood Hope's never seen before.

Chocolina refuses to divulge any information, aside from it being a gift. He's curious and a little suspicious, but he keeps it anyway.

He thinks it smells like flowers.

\----------

Hope is twenty-seven when things actually start happening.

A week after abandoning the Augusta Tower and Proto fal'Cie project, he receives word that someone had attempted to steal of its all documents and blueprints. However, the burglars had been foiled even before Academy security even realized that there was a break-in. When they were interrogated, they claimed that they'd been chased away by something that looked like a white, organic Pantheron that tied them up in the vines they'd been found in.

Nobody believes them, of course.

When Hope visits the archives to remove and destroy all remaining traces of the project himself, he finds that it's been started for him. All in all, the documentation takes up three drawers of printed paper and several disks and he finds them scattered about the room, ripped and shattered and downright broken.

He doesn't know what happened. Clearly the criminals were there to _steal_ the project from the Academy, so who captured them and trashed what was left of it? Why, even?

He takes all the scraps and burns them. He doesn't leave until he's sure that every single bit has turned to ash.

Days later, he discovers the Thirteenth Ark through the Oracle Drive. He doesn't know why he's only found it now after years of studying and poking around with its functions. He cant remember any paradoxes being fixed off the top of his head save for Adam, yet that one had been a while ago.

When he reports his findings to his employees though, he sets aside his questions in order to put his new plans in motion. Plans far better than creating a proto fal'Cie or a tower.

This time, he's remaking Cocoon.

\----------

Hope is still twenty-seven when he wakes up in the future with his assistant in the time capsule. He's still reeling from all the changes hundreds of years can do to a society when he steps out of the Academy headquarters onto the streets of... Academia.

He remembers it as plans and blueprints on paper, only hours ago for himself, because he helped design it. He imagines that can still feel the grit of graphite on his fingers while drawing, even though he'd washed his hands before entering suspended animation. But it's _so much different_ , and so much _more_ than he expected.

He has to sit down with his head in his hands for several hours because it's just _too much_. His senses are overloading and his brain is having trouble processing all the differences in his world and this one, and the voices of people coming and going through his room to check up on him become nothing but static in his ears.

After a while, he smells flowers when the door opens once again.

A big white dog trots in, followed by one of ( ~~not his anymore~~ ) the Academy employees, and Hope is suddenly reminded of his teenaged years, a similar big white dog running across a grassy plain towards him, gamboling indoors until his father tells them to take it outside, fending off the attentions of a great slobbering beast that's trying to steal what's in the frying pan, lying down in cold hard ruins with a fluffy generator of heat keeping him warm at night.

Shaky hands run through unbelievably soft and silky fur as the employee explains that white dogs have been pseudo-mascots for the Academy for a few centuries now, and that Eden, this particular dog, is the latest in the line. They don't know where these dogs keep coming from, but they keep coming and the humans keep them anyway.

When he's alone with the dog, Hope finds something that makes his vision swim, tears threatening to overwhelm his sight. His hands are at its neck and he can feel something very familiar-- a scarf. A green scarf, with a few holes and rips, looking for all the world like it hasn't been several hundred years since he'd last seen it.

"I may or may not have known your ancestor at one point," he whispers in Eden's ear.

As if understanding him, black lips curl upward at the ends, a smirk, and dark eyes stare straight at him. He knows that look. He'd seen that a lot in his youth, when he tries to lie but gets caught because he has a too-smart dog.

He's pretty sure he's already crying because Ede-- _Bravera_ is liking his cheeks.

He's just too hysterical to care. His dog is either immortal or has somehow managed to transport herself through time to be with _him_ because there's no other reason for her to be the Academy's pet.

He kisses her between the ears. He feels better about being in this time now that she's here.

\----------

Before Hope travels even further into the future, he offers Bravera her own time capsule, but she rejects it with a shake of her head. But he doesn't feel bad about that. A few months with her in this time has taught him that she's so much more than a dog.

One more century for her must seem like a year for a human.

In fact, she's the very first face he sees when he comes out of his second extended sleep. It's her that helps him get over his culture shock and get to work. Everyone protests about him being behind the console because he needs to rest, that his body isn't ready for strenuous activity after being asleep for so long, but he's needed if they're to get this New Cocoon operation done in a timely manner.

After all, he's the only one with the full plans and formulas.

(Maybe? Something at the back of his mind is a little unsure of that.)

Aina Stein is helpful to a point, as are the rest of the employees and scientists, but he's the one to lead them, with Bravera not even five feet from him, watching all the proceedings with one sleepy eye.

When New Cocoon is complete, Bravera shepherds everyone into it.

When Caius invades Academia, Bravera fights with the rest of them and she crushes the monsters under her paws.

When Sazh successfully rescues Fang and Vanille's crystal, Bravera jumps into his arms and knocks him down onto the floor, but he's too happy to care about a possible concussion.

When he discovers that Serah is dead ( _no, no, no, not again_ ) on the airship, Bravera looks up, prompting everyone to look up as well. There it is, a scientific impossibility, a tear in the sky showing with another world visible beyond it, as if the world is a piece of fabric that it's so easy to rip a hole through it.

For the first time in a long time, Hope feels true fear. His new beginning is quickly becoming an end, and he hasn't even had time to do _anything_.

Bravera walks towards the edge of the airship, and he wants to call her back to him lest she falls, but when he opens his mouth, he finds he cant speak because he's too scared. But she looks back at him and smiles, and he knows that smile-- it's the one that reassures him that everything will be fine. It's the smile she gives him every time they visit Cocoon's crystal pillar every year.

Impossibly, he feels a little better, even though he knows it should be crazy. How can an immortal dog do anything about this?

She jerks her head at his pocket, the pocket where he keeps the brush-- and he's known its origins for a while, ever since reuniting with her. Its fine hairs come from her unusual tail. Her giving it to him through Chocolina had been a gift. Now he understands it to be a promise for her to come back.

It's impossible for him to keep his yell of surprise silent when she steps off the airship and for one horrible second he thinks she's dead.

But a large bird with her colors and his scarf rises up, up, _up_ and into the tear between the worlds, dodging the strands of chaos, and he feels weak at the knees, because really. Only he would have the strangest pet in the entire world.

**Author's Note:**

> I think I should clarify the bird thing. Much of this story is taken from my headcanon for both characters, most especially for Hope, but obviously there's some for Ammy too.
> 
> The bird thing comes from early concept art of Amaterasu having three forms, one for land, one for the sea, and one for the air-- wolf, of course, being land. The other two were scrapped since we never see them in the game, but my headcanon says that she can transform into a [falcon](http://www.artofokami.com/images/characters/characters_35.jpg) and a [dolphin](http://www.artofokami.com/images/characters/characters_32.jpg) at will. She just needs to be at full power to be able to do so.


End file.
